EMTA Presents a Primer on the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act
On October 21, 2009, EMTA hosted a Special Seminar “Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act - A Primer” intended to provide a comprehensive introduction to the topic of sovereign immunity and presented by James Kerr of Davis Polk & Wardwell, a well-known expert on the topic.
Underlying the value of a sovereign debt is its enforceability, and enforcing a claim against a sovereign, or defending a sovereign against such a claim, raises very sophisticated legal and policy questions. Simply put, recent developments in this area cannot be understood, and future trends cannot be anticipated, without a deeper understanding of the origin and evolution of the law of sovereign immunity than most market participants or their legal advisors now have.
This Seminar was intended to provide the foundation that is needed to understand how sovereign claims can be successfully asserted (and collected) or defended. This Seminar forms part of a series of meetings EMTA initiated in 2006 (the fi rst of which focused on How a Ratings Agency Brings a Country Out of Default) designed to explore issues of relevance to participants in today’s Emerging Markets and to promote greater transparency and effi ciency in the EM trading and investment marketplace. (Later panels have focused on Enforcement under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act; Partial Sovereign Restructurings; Some Offi cial Sector Implications; The Argentina Precedent: Will Others Follow and Ecuador’s Tender Offer.) Rather than merely an introduction to the topic, this Seminar provided the key to understanding a critical aspect of what determines the underlying value of assets in our marketplace.
For more information, please contact Aviva Werner at awerner@emta.org.